


The Wall

by pettiot



Series: Dragon Age II Kinkmeme [2]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Bodily Fluids, Body Horror, Degradation, Fisting, Forced Feeding, Horror, M/M, Milking, Multi, enema, heavy non-con, prostate torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-01
Updated: 2013-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:54:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22508878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pettiot/pseuds/pettiot
Summary: For the prompt: Templars somehow find out that Fenris' semen is laced with lyrium. So some enterprising templars chain him up and proceed to pleasure him as often as he can get it up, and bottle the product like potions.
Relationships: Fenris/Templars
Series: Dragon Age II Kinkmeme [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1619464
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	The Wall

Karras' eyes followed something only he could see in Andraste's shadow.

'A nuisance and a time-waster if all this is another serial fallacy.'

Alrik shrugged, a generous motion for the weight of his steel. 'But if it is true, then we have a source independent of the smugglers perpetually falling before the might of our Champion. In hindsight, early exploration would not be a nuisance.'

'Hindsight,' Karras said, with a brief, terrifying vagueness. 'Yes, if only I had known before. I have no more kindness left in me. The mage never should have--'

Alrik watched his colleague thoughtfully.

For templars of a certain age or of an independent mind, the lyrium dosage frustrated instead of clarified. Alrik wanted to admit his disgust seeing this truth in his fellows, when the tongue could not take command, when the body was ridiculous, when any talk of the Maker or duty only belittled or destroyed the intention.

But the disgust would have recoiled upon himself. Their fates were the same. Alrik looked high, to the nave. The priests lit the candles around the nave's perimeter.

Karras recalled himself. 'First we have to catch the elf.'

'First,' Alrik said agreeably, 'we shall have to plan what can be done to hold him, or the catching will be in vain.'

Funded by pooled coin, Fenris suffered several nighttime ambushes from anonymous thugs equipped with various items from the Templar armoury. A strange and expensive experiment, until Alrik noted one material which could still touch the elf while he phased.

'Had to be starmetal.' Karras spat off the roof. His right hand was never still, nailed buffed on the commoner's tunic he wore as disguise, the ragged ends bit, spat, and buffed again.

'A metal literally out of this world. What else would work against an unnatural ability of this world?'

In the alley below, Fenris wrenched his glowing fist from the thug's chest, staggering backwards to brace against the wall. With a low moan more growl than weakness, he wrenched the starmetal dagger from his thigh. Metal clattered to the cobbles, the elf's impressive sword collected from where the shock had made him fall. He limped off, likely to Hawke's pet healer, who, if rumour was to be believed, Hawke was also fucking. Certainly, Meredith herself had warned them off the healer--

Saying nothing about the elf, Alrik reminded himself.

Together Alrik and Karras descended to the site of ambush. A partial proof: even the elf's spilled blood yielded the suggestion of lyrium, and Alrik with his lesser need could recognise the song as readily as Karras in his desperation.

'Stupid! We'll kill him if we bleed him for our needs!'

'Drinking his blood?' Alrik affected surprise. 'I'm not suggesting we engage in something that might be misinterpreted as blood magic.'

'What else is there? He's just one bloody,' another nervous gob, and a growl, 'lyrium infused elf.'

'Such an unimaginative adolescence you must have suffered, Ser Karras. Did you never even try the other side of the bed?'

Rage scarcely banked. 'Never on my knees.'

'Yet I've rarely noticed your sensibilities interfering before where your baser nature might otherwise benefit.'

'I am no come-drinking mage.'

Alrik looked at him sadly.

'No, my friend. You are a templar, and you are a slave to the Chantry, controlled and rewarded like a pet by the flow of their lyrium. Handed out like treats, only to find this providence suddenly withheld as punishment when you get just a little rough. Noting, as I do, that said small roughness you delivered to that particular apostate only as ordered by your own Knight-Commander. An injustice, for the Chantry to punish you for following orders. An injustice that you should be held hostage now to a career decision made by a much younger, more foolish and uninformed version of yourself.' A thoughtful, weighted pause. 'Imagine how far we might run if we could guarantee our own supply.'

More contemplative than sullen, Karras scuffed his heel through the trail of Fenris' singing blood and said, 'Imagine how far we might go.'

'You understand what our freedom is worth.'

Karras said, 'I have never hated anything so much as what my life has become.'

'Well, then. My friend. This we commit to, as our first act as free men. May many more freedoms follow.'

Alrik offered his hand, and Karras shook it.

The amount of starmetal required took almost a year to acquire.

Kirkwall kept so few festival days, when Alrik completed his preparations so closely with one the coincidence begged acknowledgement. A celebration, well, why not? There was little enough else to get excited about in Kirkwall under a Knight Commander who knew the reality of the situation, but who refused to act, letter after letter, petition after petition.

Alrik shook his irritation away.

There, Fenris was drunk and blinking slowly against the sun. He stood in the shadows of the mansion where he squatted alone; such a wise lifestyle choice. Fenris studied the uncaring crowd with a distant, lost expression, as if waiting to see the approach of someone he knew. His weight shifted constantly as if the chaos of nobility swelling and ebbing in his street, all grimly ignoring him, could ever offer the untouchable elf a threat.

Not unexpectedly, he drank straight from the bottle. Not as gauche as it would have been on an ordinary day in Hightown. His mouth was slack, a shining trickle spilling careless over his lower lip, unnoticed by anyone but the five Templars scrutinising him from the opposite side of the square.

Almost always drunk except when running vanguard, prone to fits and starts of temper, a sour mood and vicious humor, indiscriminate sex and no friends. The description would have fit any a near-feral mercenary squatting in a dump, if not for the lyrium gleaming below Fenris' lip as he licked at spilled wine.

In casual leathers, a flushed and peachy Keran picked his way through the crowd.

Alrik mused momentarily on the sweatiness of youth. Imagine being so nervous for such a simple thing after being handled by blood mages.

Personalities were so vulnerable. Better to be like Karras, and have none.

'I'd rest my coin. The elf's waiting for Hawke.' Castor rubbed his chin.

Beside him, Karras' mage looked at his bandaged palms and swallowed.

'Hawke is with the pirate and will not come. If Fenris wanted, he could always approach the docks instead of lurking here.'

'How do we even know Hawke's still there? Relying on the word of Sampson, of all things.'

'We can trust Sampson,' Alrik said coolly. 'He has a vested interest in this endeavour. He will alert us if Hawke changes his plans.'

'Bah, Fenris,' Karras sneered, an abrupt contribution to the conversation considering his shifty, unsteady silence. 'For a choice of vanguard, he's a poor one. Deadly or no, I've never heard a tale yet where he takes the initiative. He'll wait until Andraste's second coming before making a move, when anyone with a decent pair would have hunted down the magister and eviscerated him. Even an elf.'

Lucan grinned. 'How ironic. Maligning Fenris' pair.'

'I had no idea you read the installments, S--Ser. Ser.'

The wavering voice of Karras' pet mageling was as surprising as Karras' own attempts to speak. Alain flushed dark when they all turned to look.

You had no idea the brute could read, Alrik thought, gleefully.

It was Karras' darting eyes that Alain struggled to avoid, hands drywashing until finally clamping around his own wrists.

'They're a ways to pass the time, while--' Karras' fingers clawed, then fisted, gauntlets creaking, a grunt deep in his throat. 'Before it gets really bad. When distraction is enough. They're not heavy reading, you understand.'

Alain flinched at what was almost a friendly conversation.

You had no idea the brute could talk, Alrik thought, still gleefully.

'A rightful criticism,' he soothed. 'Do you know the author, Alain?'

Matteo interrupted before the mage could stutter an answer. 'Maker take the cursed author. Could we all possibly talk more drivel? I haven't heard enough today.'

Alrik's good humour was undaunted. 'I sympathise with your impatience, my friend. When contemplating such actions as these, the uncertainty is grating. Will we be caught, where lies our success--'

'Uncertainty is always grating. This is Kirkwall.'

Under the pressure of Matteo's dark stare, the mage veritably radiated a plea for help at his fidgeting, distracted Karras. The stain of blood magic on Alain's reputation had made him a target; no doubt he found it difficult to curse Karras his nightly toll for preventing the inevitable mass punishment.

But if it was Alain that Matteo thought would betray them, well. The mage was honestly repentant, Karras enthused, and after that last episode Alain confirmed adamantly that he was vested in procuring a whole and sane protector.

'Alas,' Alrik offered the palms of his gauntlets to the sky, pious. 'If only there were definite solutions. But instead all we have is an opportunity offered for our actions.'

'Speaking of action,' Castor mused, 'how long does it take to give an elf a blow job?'

They turned to Keran, who in profile was redder than the celebratory bunting. Fenris rocked on his heels, bottle forgotten in his hand, looking at the young templar in bemusement.

'How long?' Karras asked, vague.

'Nigh on eleven inches and each one more astounding than the last. If one might believe the seventh installment of Dark in Darktown: the Fugitives Embrace.' Lucan grinned at nothing. 'Here, a better one: how many templars does it take to give an elf a blow job? Because I'm rather sure our peach-cheeked Keran is about to fub the witty riposte--'

But Fenris' brisk rejection slowed and his head lowered, hair covering his face. Hesitant, Keran raised his hand in fits and starts, to Fenris' cheek, then Fenris' brow. He brushed the elf's hair to one side with an unspeakable charm.

Fenris shifted his weight again, sudden, obvious and tired acceptance, leaning into Keran's palm. The bottle deposited with a careful, drunken grace, the elf gestured for Keran to lead the way.

Keran did as ordered, and did not look back across the crowded court at the five watching Templars and one limp mage.

'Thank the Maker for that.'

'There's a certain charm in earnest youth that even the hardest mercenaries are loathe to resist. Particularly when the youth in question offers his services openly, without innuendo.'

'You speak like you know from experience,' Castor's lazy eyes flicked in Alrik's direction. 'Are you bothering the recruits, Ser Alrik?'

'Watch your tongue,' Alrik said, a friendly, fond exasperation. 'Keran has as much to prove after his lapse as our charge Alain, and a desperate Templar is nigh as dangerous as a desperate mage.'

Matteo rumbled a warning. 'In this as in all things, we will all have to watch our tongues. The Knight Commander will not be pleased if we assault Hawke's comrades.'

Alrik screwed up his features in distaste. 'Since when was freely offered oral sex an assault? I saw no coercion behind Keran's charm.'

'Frame this however you will, Alrik. If you call it by an honest name, then it is less likely your deceptions will trip you up.'

Comments like that were why Alrik did not fear Alain's flapping tongue.

'I resent the implication, Ser Matteo. It's hardly likely this could proceed without the elf's full cooperation.'

Matteo continued to brood.

But, it was in relative unity they allowed the flow of the crowd to drift them towards the room prepared for Fenris. Templars moved through the privileged Hightown numbers, nobility ignoring their armour and sunbursts so blithely because the templars were as much a faceless fixture as Kirkwall's faceless stone.

Walking into that velvet lined room dispelled Alrik's last doubts. Dark the walls were with only five stubby candles bleeding into each other on the table, the sounds at the far end were clear, the air thick with scent and the lyrium song.

Alrik swallowed a mouth suddenly full of fluid, a hunger mostly repressed flaring awake.

Matteo sucked in a hard breath and shook his head, brisk. Alain bit his lip, cowl hiding the whole of his expression. And they were not on abbreviated rations: Alrik turned with Castor and Lucan to look at Karras, an idle interest in mischief.

Karras' aimless eyes quickly found their focus through the dark, shadowed forms and a hint of motion. He shuddered, full body, his visible skin suddenly as gleaming wet as if he had walked through the rain as a low breath, nearly a moan, padded rich and lush across the length of the velvet room.

Fenris' unawareness could not continue. Castor took his position outside the room, two quick, creaking steps, and Alrik moved to seal the door behind him, banded metal and no internal lock or even handle. The walls jarred with the slam.

'Wh--'

Still mostly clad, lunging to his feet and tipping Keran to his arse, Fenris' eyes were wide beneath the fall of his hair, crazed glints of candlelight, his breath coming fast. One hand held his unlaced waistband high, free hand reaching--

His gaze flicked to one side, next to Alrik, who moved before even the elf's speed could grace, and grabbed the hilt of the elf's sword.

'Oof,' Alrik grinned. 'What a serviceable blade you keep.'

'Templars.' If the voice was blurred with tiredness, pleasure, booze, there was none of the lonely elf here, no wistful expression as if waiting for a friend to move through the crowd. Fenris filled the room with tension all on his own. The lyrium at his throat glittered, and Alrik felt an obscene curiosity spark, a vague disappointment Keran had failed to strip the elf naked.

Wary about the wrong things, this one. Or he would have noticed the lack of any windows, the metal nails hammered into the walls underneath the velvet drapes, forming a pinpoint net too tight for him to have phased through even the width of his palm without damage. The cheapest use of their limited resource, and one Alrik was sure would work better than a tiny cage.

'Observant little fellow,' Lucan drawled, as if savouring the irony like wine.

'What do you want? I am no enemy of yours.' Poised, ready for attack. The very air tasted like lyrium.

Instead of answering, Alrik looked at the sprawling recruit.

'Young Keran, of the virgin mouth and only mortal desperation colouring your perception. Your comments on the quality of the vintage, hmm?'

Keran licked wet lips, flush as berries. He could not meet Alrik's eye. 'He didn't-- He had not--'

'That the substance infuses him is doubtless,' Alrik rubbed his fingers together, nothing between them but the thick air, 'but as pure as the Chantry's offering? Pure enough to be any good to us?'

'It's--' A sublime lick of expression. Keran's gaze plunged into the middle distance. 'Good enough.'

Matteo slapped a gauntlet across Karras' chest plate, holding him back.

With no blade for his hand, Fenris opted to repair his modesty, one eye always their way. 'Whatever grief you have with me, templars, this one seduced me.' His voice came cloyed, angry and frustrated, confused. 'I have not trespassed.'

'I am afraid, serah, we will not be able to leave Keran out of this any more than the honey can be left out of the trap.'

Keran rose unsteadily, the narrow bed as prop for his palms, creaking under his weight. Fenris did not move, but something shifted in the set of his muscles, wariness now honed.

'Come.' Alrik spread his arms, palms to the low, metal-studded ceiling. 'Let us sit at the table and discuss this in a civilised fashion. Precipitous contrivance notwithstanding, for which I apologise, none of us have much desire to inflict violence upon your flesh. Our native preference is that you demonstrate a likewise restraint. In the commitment of violence, at least.'

There was a pause, a suggestion of growl. 'Discuss what.'

'A business proposition.'

Judging by the absence of impending doom, Fenris was considering his options.

Four templars, one recruit, and a mage watched motionless as Fenris walked to the room's incongruous table setting, his breath still fast, loud. Fenris kept his hands above the table, bare feet flat on the floor, spine straight despite the stool's lack of back.

'I am sitting.'

Alrik gave Lucan the elf's greatsword, taking the chair opposite, his men moving to flank. 'I've heard you can't read, so we will keep this verbal, my companions as witness. You trust templars, yes?'

'No.'

'Pity. We are here to talk about your lyrium.'

Of everything Fenris could have said or done, he clenched one fist until the leather creaked.

'You might have heard an unsubstantiated little rumour, bit of nasty gossip, about the source of templar magic resistance. Our connection to the Maker, so to speak, lifeblood, protection, sustenance, power.'

'Lyrium addiction is a poorly concealed fact, templar, not a "widely spread rumour". I have killed others for less than what you are about to suggest.'

'Yes, yes,' Lucan said cheerfully, 'the agony of the lyrium infliction being the forge in which you were remade. Did you ever wonder if perchance you were the crucible in which the lyrium found its form? We all read the story.'

'Do you mock me?'

'With friends like yours, I can see why you have a hard time telling the difference.'

The lyrium ignited soundlessly, shadows banished in an ice-white glow. Alrik heard Matteo's rough curse to his left, Karras' renewed struggle to approach.

'Death, much as violence, would be such a waste! Hacking lyrium from old scars, a meaningless act. Unsustainable, savvy? Only a madman would cut down a tree to get to the first apple. Discussion is in your best interests, serah.'

'The lyrium is mine.' The glow did not ease.

Matteo spoke harshly. 'All lyrium, from mine to manufacture to flask to mouth, belongs to the Chantry.'

'Raise your quarrel with the magister who carved me like wood and packed lyrium dust into my bleeding wounds.'

'Dust,' Karras groaned, fitful.

'You must know it's poisoning you. Tainting your blood, the sting in your sweat, heart racing without reason. No food has flavour, your breath comes shallow, but shadows and vagueness of thought deepen. Memory loss, followed by hyperactivity, rage, an absolute need to act and urgently. Any of this familiar? It gets worse. Trust us. We know.'

The lyrium glow died without flicker. By contrast the candles gave only more light than nothing.

Fenris swallowed, loud and liquid.

'What do you want, Templar? I will not betray--'

Hawke was in the room, summoned if unsaid.

'As if everything in this city revolves around a Fereldan apostate. We want you. In a sustainable manner.'

'You want lyrium.'

'We want a source of lyrium independent of the smugglers. We want freedom from the chains the Chantry holds over us. We want our right minds back, for however brief a period a corrupted high might last. Lyrium is all that can offer it, and you can offer lyrium. I will repeat: we want you.'

'What you propose is not--' Fenris looked at Keran. Unguarded even by shadow, his expression crumpled. Alrik nearly felt sorry for him. 'No.'

'I'm sorry,' Keran told the floor.

'The magister used me in the same way. I will not do this, templar.'

'Well, it wouldn't have to be by the direct delivery method,' Alrik said, jovial. 'We provide you with flasks and your freedom, you provide us with lyrium.'

'I will not do this, templar.'

'Then you will stay in this room until we have an agreement. That is my word, serah, and I ensure I can keep my word before I give it. Call me a man of honour.'

'I will call you dead, because I will kill you all and walk out after, your -- lockless door and walls notwithstanding. That is my agreement.'

'That is your arrogance,' Alrik gripped the edge of the incongruous table.

But Karras offered the punchline.

'Try, elf.'

* * *

Fenris forced his will through lyrium scars.

The otherworld flared whitebright. Shaded in different colours and forms, the templars here were energy and force in a soup of permeable nothing, hearts and brains and stomachs radiating vulnerability, their armour not even present.

He stood, liquid death.

Alrik moved quickly, bending and lifting a white -- shield? -- No, what, what was that? --

Fenris took the barrier's full force to the chest, hands slapping futile against the surface.

His concentration stuttered, lyrium light dying, the hot candlewax on the table such an inconsequential sear as it splashed across his lips and cheek. The room was dark.

'While he's down!'

'To the fore--'

A wordless suffocated war cry.

Shoved by the flat of the table, Fenris smacked against stone, surrounded and bewildered. He flailed against the walls, gauntlets scrabbling. Nothing yielded except the velvet drape behind him, tumbling rod and all, covering their struggle in a smothering veil.

'My friends, and together--'

Fenris flared again.

Lyrium lit the proximity beneath the velvet drape, shades of madness. The joker and the staring Templar flanked Alrik behind the table, all three pinning him into the corner. Fenris cursed them, liquid syllables waves of colour through lyrium. One foot to the wall to brace, he thrust without hesitation through the table's blankwhite surface into where the Templars' hearts should have pulsed with visible vulnerability.

Both hands battered into the unbearably solid surface, force numbing then aching, all the way to his shoulders.

Panicking, Fenris crouched below the next Templar thrust, the full force striking the stone over his head. He shoved the lower lip of the table up, adding to the Templars' motion, winning enough space to pass beneath. He clawed through the nearest unguarded skirts as he rolled.

A Templar screamed, an inhuman redripple of agony.

Fenris ran full into the door, howling when a thousand pinpricks of fire lanced into every inch of his skin.

The lyrium glow slipped and died.

In the darkness, the hamstrung Templar groaned. Fenris' own pain came in short, sharp gasps. Breathing everywhere. His right side, his leading side with which he struck the door, felt strange, tingling, wet.

Every inch! Bleeding and pin-pricked, by something he could not phase through. Every inch, every searing inch--

Abruptly, he was being throttled, implacable arms lifting. Suspended without even the cold floor as surety, Fenris jerked and wrenched, mind blank with dread.

'Mage! I will not remind you again of your duty!'

The answering wisp of light showed Fenris the mad stare at the other end of the chokehold.

Fenris ghosted again, lyrium screaming with strain. Karras' hands insubstantial, he dropped out of the hold and reached full into the Templar's chest.

The mage's voice shook. 'No, Ser Karras!'

The air heated as if with immanent conflagration, every breath damp and wretched.

Karras snarled thickly, 'Stupid mage. Remember your control!'

Alain smothered his sob with his knuckles.

The table brigade, crippled by one, approached.

A slow smile lifted Karras' lips at the corners. 'As for you, unnatural creature, magister toy. Little savage. Are you enjoying the feel of my heart? Will you eat our corpses in this great dark room before you die of starvation, or will you cut your own throat when the thirst sends you mad?'

Singing blood blinding one eye, Fenris flinched from the understanding.

The velvet drapes had fallen.

The walls winked at him, through his ghosted vision studded neatly with a net of those blankwhite shafts, sharpened at both ends. The same impenetrable substance which sheathed the table's underside, which studded the door, which pierced his lyrium self.

So many deadly warnings.

Net and cage. A waking nightmare.

Fenris' breath came fast, shallow.

The lyrium slipped Fenris' control, leaving him facing the Templars and their mage with nothing more than his palms.

'End this quickly.'

'No chance,' Alrik said. 'Sorry.'

Fenris could not submit easily, even with defeat dragging every motion. But he could not strike a killing blow. An indignity, that their words, the horror of this whoreson room and their calculated maliciousness, had bound him against himself. Fenris wanted them to pay for this and the coming rape in blood and wounding. He even touched their pet mage, punching as if force could break the heart where his broken will no longer compelled the lyrium. Wretched and breathless, the mage flung him back into the fray with a mental blast even as Karras, raw with outrage, engulfed Fenris in a crushing embrace and brought him to the floor with weight alone.

The templars wrestled him across the room. Grovelling on his stomach, they raised him to his knees only to knock him down again, cheek to the floor and a heavy knee grinding between his shoulders until his ribs groaned and creaked.

A moment more Fenris arched against their weight, the mage-lit room resonant with heaving breaths and curses, willing himself to disbelieve in his own submission. To make that disbelief reality.

But when all the battle had been fought, he had raped, and been raped before. It was a small violence compared to survival.

Then, Alrik collared him.

Lost.

Bucking and thrashing without purpose, animal terror. Gauntlets shrieking against stone. Lyrium flickering, unwilling to course to his shattered mindless desperation, templars cursing and punching, punching--

The Templars' combined weight wedded him to the slick stone, gritty wet on his mouth, metal and blood.

Even mindless panic had a lifespan. The collar was simply cold, the same unworldly metal peppering the walls, but no magic or calculated pain had been enchanted into the ring.

Karras hooked his fingers between metal and skin, fingers sliding against the blood, wrenching it up hard enough Fenris choked and retched, clinging to Karras' wrist for some hope at breath.

Karras shook him to the floor in disgust.

Alrik stood and affected a groan, hand to the small of his back. 'Ser Karras, can you not think to put your mage to better use?'

'Alain. Heal these idiots, who let an elf wound them.'

'I-- I can't--'

'Heal them!'

Keran stood by the door, head hanging, eyes staring through the bloodied floor. He had not fought, but blood smeared on his rosy cheeks and at the corner of his mouth. His chest heaved as if with sympathy for the struggle. Fenris willed him to look, a silent scream for the young one with the tender lips and moonstruck eyes to meet his gaze. Keran was no friend of Hawke's, not after Hawke would not affirm him against Cullen's suspicions, but Keran still owed Hawke for his life--

Keran did not look up.

'Turn him. Over here.'

Fenris strained against the many hands.

'No, I owe the cunt--'

The dark, staring Templar's face came into his view, mottled with rage. One eye socket was newly empty, scars still fresh and raw whatever Alain's limited healing could offer.

'I should take both your cursed eyes in payment!'

The full and repeated weight of a metal fist blinded Fenris well enough, savaging his face as if it insulted. His vision doubled, tripled, hazed across time and distance.

Alrik stopped the onslaught, Fenris saw and heard that well enough through the buzz of imminent unconsciousness. Lucan, once hamstrung and still limping, found the time during Alrik and Matteo's bellowing discussion to put the boot in Fenris' kidneys.

'Not nearly as good as a fist around the heart, you vicious little shit! So have another for good measure--'

Alrik, again, stopped the vengeful templar with a gentling hand to the breastplate. 'Alain, I hesitate to presume on another's mage, but do keep something in reserve for our pet. I won't have blood tainting the product.'

Hands closed dispassionately around his thighs and shoulders.

'Now. Together, on three. One, two--'

Fenris saw so briefly when they lifted him, head lolling. The true purpose of the augmented table, one side wood and the other sheathed in that impermeable metal. A pillory, not a table. Alrik opened it along a long seam down the centre.

Fenris curled in denial. The Templars did not seem to notice but for Karras' snort, moving him easily. Alrik closed the stocks around his neck and wrists, Fenris closing his eyes against the sound of bolts sliding home. The collar was on this side of the stocks, his side of the wall, reflex recoil slamming the metal ring against the wood.

He was begging them, he realised, words spilling from his lips like the blood and spit, in great involuntary strands.

'Is that arcanum?'

'Sounds like gibberish to me. Does that sound like gibberish to you?'

'--stop.'

Fenris said.

He hooked his toes against the floor, pushed. His knees hit stone and splayed, the fall hurting worse than the struggle to rise. His own aching weight suffocated him, the knot of his throat caught against the stocks.

He fought to kneel.

Bile and sour wine scoured his throat and he let it come, a flood unnoticeable in the bloodied strands already hanging from his lips.

Alrik went to one knee by Fenris' head, oddly graceful, uncaring of the fluid.

Alrik said sweetly, 'Stop, please.'

'--please.' Rasping.

'Please, what?'

'Stop.' Fenris sobbed. 'I will--'

'Ah, but you know how it feels when a well-meant offer gets rejected out of hand. My colleagues and I cannot absorb the insult of the grievous bodily harm you chose to inflict. So, my friend, there are consequences to such a belligerent attitude as yours, and the consequences are such. For you, there are no choices. There are only alternatives.'

Fenris could not understand the words, through pain and two languages, through his horror. His knee slipped on his own bloodied spill. He struggled to kick upright again, to find himself a position in which he could breathe, taking his weight on his knees and in his throbbing back to spare his throat.

Why? Why struggle? Why--

'I want to live,' Fenris said, slurred.

Alrik ruffled Fenris' hair, causing waves of pain and a tempting blackness. His ears roared.

'In that, at least, we share an accord. Heal him.'

Fenris' eyes rolled, seeking the source of this next assault. Alain wavered at the command until Karras snarled and flicked his fingers in assent. The magic went through him like a flood, wrenching even the right to his pain away. Sweat wept from his brow, droplets quivering tentative at the ends of lank hair.

Fenris found a gleaming head of one battered nail in the floor, an island against the encroaching fluid. Focus. There. Alone. Let it happen, let it be over.

The Templars stripped him, greaves to gauntlets. His healed body moved too easily in their hands.

'I've always wondered how--'

'--lyrium, grafted to the inside of his armour. You owe me a sovereign.'

'How would it even work? Lyrium to lyrium to metal, in the same way lightning leaps from metal to water to metal?'

'How would I even know, fool? Ask a Tranquil!'

'I think I will. Imagine the Divine's armies, if we could have the Tranquil augment flesh and armour to work in concert.'

'If it means we end up like this thing,' a boot rested on Fenris' calf. 'I would keep that nightmare to myself.'

Alrik unlaced the gauntlets from Fenris' hands and coaxed clenched fists to unfurl. He hummed in admiration, his gloved hands gentle as he kneaded Fenris' palms, the scarred spaces between his knuckles. 'There's near as much lyrium in his hands as everywhere else in his body. Hardly any flesh left at all.'

'Elf dicks,' Lucan propped his boot on Fenris' flank and shoved. 'Like dogs. Are you certain we can't just bleed him?'

'Alain, the flask.'

Glass clinked on stone, somewhere behind the wall of steel separating Fenris from his body.

'Keran,' Alrik said. 'Distasteful as this is, I know. If you could finish what you started before all this -- unnecessary disruption?'

Fenris resigned himself.

A struggle.

Heart still racing from the shockwave of fighting, hurting, healing. Breath yet uneven, hiccuping like a child too long weeping. His eyes did not see. There was not much to see.

Alrik righted the chair on Fenris' side of the wall, standing at ease beside it. The others made their noises from the dark of Fenris' limited periphery: the pet mage, whose panting fear-breath was near swallowed in the other sounds. Karras, muttering to himself, the creak of armour and rustle of motion as he paced, four steps back, four steps forth. The joker Lucan, leaning by the door, plate rasping against stone. The freshly one-eyed Matteo next to Lucan, standing, bootheels scuffing the blood damp floor.

Leather brushed against Fenris' flank without warning, Keran withdrawing with a gasp when Fenris flinched. But the featherlight touch came again, just under his navel, his knee rising in a defence aborted half-way.

Fenris could not see. Let it happen to the other self. Quicker done, quicker-- done.

Keran's hand was tentative when it closed, four points of pressure along the sheath.

'He's a big one for an elf,' Lucan said. 'Nigh freakish big. Small wonder he stays away from the alienage, they'd like as not stone him for a polka-dot rat. Have you ever seen one that tall?'

'They all have arses like boys when they kneel.'

Involuntary, Fenris clenched his thighs at Karras' rasp, the templar's laughter rising.

'Stop, Karras! If we must commit this atrocity, do it without malicious intent. There should be no pleasure taken from this.'

'Why not?' Karras sounded honestly confused. 'The elf might argue in favour of pleasure.'

Lucan heaved a great groan. 'Always the spoilsport, Teo. Here, a puzzle for distraction, go mull it over outside if you must. How are we ever going to explain that eye away? Misplaced on patrol? Adventures in the Blooming Rose? A desire demon delivered a full facial load of burning brimstone and liquid Fade?'

Matteo growled, a sound which sent sweat sheeting across Fenris' skin; the beating as punishment had been scarce minutes ago, Matteo's anger articulated with the same sound.

'How have we ever explained away your mouth? A hunger demon used it as a privy?'

Keran's thumb joined the fingertips, counterpoint pressure along the other side of Fenris' sheath. The adrenaline did not help with his thickening flesh. Fenris could feel the familiar muscles tighten in his abdomen, pressure nudging his length forward. Keran touched the bared head, and even that tentative motion sent licks of sensation to further betray him. Fingertips alighted on the wetness and pulled away too soon.

'Ser. I can't get more than the head.'

'So suck him out, Keran, then milk him dry. We have travelled too far down this path to further carry such heavy principles.'

'I don't want to suck him. Not while you watch. Please, ser, please don't make me. I have done everything you asked without question--'

'Only a suggestion, lad. However you fill that flask is up to you.' Alrik rolled his shoulders, eyes always on Fenris', his mouth twitching upwards. 'Do take your time.'

Keran's mouth was as warm and wet as before, his lips soft, ripe. Fenris closed his eyes to spare himself Alrik's smile. Involuntary muscle shoved his length forward in jerks and inches into the waiting warmth, the firmer his resistance the harder his erection.

'Nng-- augh! Shit, I forgot how long--' Keran's recoil knocked the flask away, glass tinkling on stone. 'Oh, no.'

'Get out of the way, fool boy!'

Flesh on flesh, an awesome backhand, Keran crying out.

A huge hand closed around Fenris' vulnerable prick and wrenched downwards, hard, leather glove rough on delicate flesh. Fenris sounded against the back of his teeth, lips refusing to part.

Karras, not Karras, not--

His desperate kick connected, but in plate armour Karras absorbed the blow and wrestled the limb down, fist behind the knee and pushing in, in, until the pain became lightning and Fenris cried out.

'Like this, boy, you see?' After the jerk which forced Fenris full from the sheath, the hand was steady if not gentle, unrelenting, a rippling pattern of pull and tug which travelled the full length from stomach to leaking tip. 'We were never here for a damned show. Now get another flask.'

The tip of his prick kissed against cold, smooth glass with each upwards push Karras gave. Fenris twitched, an abortive evasion which earned him a hard slap on his the thigh. The circle of pained flesh felt like it was expanding, the only sane sensation from behind the wall.

Fenris focused on the pain of that strike. He swallowed, letting his head bow, neck caught against the stocks. Behind his closed eyes, blue stars spiralled, hearing blurred at the edges.

If he passed out--

Cold hands clenched too tight around his balls, his vulnerability again making him jerk and gasp for air.

'I said gently!' Karras shouted. 'Now hold the damned flask steady. When his balls draw up tight, the knot will drop, and when it does if you try to play shy virgin again I'll bust you myself and bedamned if you're one of us. When it comes -- hold tight behind, your hand flush with his belly, and work it in the same rhythm I use.'

'So much for my earlier concerns about your sensibilities interfering, Ser Karras.'

Karras growled at Alrik's smooth tone, his hand never ceasing even as Keran's newly tentative fingers tickled Fenris' balls.

'I did not intend to criticise, my friend. Only noting that very little gets in your way when the outcome might benefit.'

Karras said, 'Mage, come here. Touch him here.' A finger stabbed Fenris' sacrum, just over his spine. 'You remember this trick.'

'Yes, Ser Karras.'

'Wait until my word.'

'Such admirable focus when it's necessary. You researched our endeavour, I take it?'

'I can smell the fucking lyrium,' Karras said harshly. 'I dream about it. I dream about nothing else. Could you have done better, Ser Alrik?'

The touch over Fenris' spine changed, Alain's fingertips chill and shaking.

'I will not watch this,' Matteo said curtly. 'This is not as things should be.'

'Should be easier not to watch now, Teo, what with only one eye to turn the other way.'

'You mouthy bastard, I'll--.'

'Take your own advice and watch your own hypocrisy, Teo. We are all culpable.'

A trickle of something tinkled into the glass. Fenris was not arching into that disinterested hand, his quivering aimless, directionless. His only defiance was in not thinking of Hawke.

Karras hawked and spat on his arse.

'No--'

Fingers rubbed through the spittle, then twisted into his hole without pause.

Burning, too hard in thick leather, the fingers felt like bone instead of flesh. They hooked in hard and pressed.

Too many hands. The shaking fingertip on his spine, the fingers hurting inside, the callous gloved hand with its ceaseless wrenching pull, the insane tickling at his balls. Fenris breathed through his mouth, hyperventilating.

The pressure inside intensified, the trickle coming louder, a stream. He felt the familiar strain at his drawn sheath, the sudden swinging heaviness of his prick, but none of the usual pleasure.

'Keran.'

A vice clamped at the knot's base, knuckles touching his belly. 'Oh, Maker, it's huge.'

The hard fingers pulled out from him, an empty relief. 'Alain.'

Lightning stabbed to fill the void, and Fenris screamed.

Sobbed for breath.

Screamed again.

His body bowed and snapped.

'There you are,' Karras said.

A distant place Fenris could scarcely hear.

Fingers scissored roughly into burning flesh, finding that pressure point again and kneading it, unrelenting as his other hand. 'There you are. Knothole far too tight for an apostate's boy, eh, elf?'

There were no spasms, no orgasm. His release came as a burning trickle only on each twisting downwards tug, constant and terrifying for the strangeness, as though he were urinating instead of coming. The humiliation of that uncontrolled stream outlasted the pain of the mage's lightning trigger, long after Alain retreated, long after Keran had begged permission to ease his grip and retreat, as Fenris kept coming.

'Elves,' Lucan said, with trace revulsion.

Karras alone did not release him until the last wretched drop had been wiped from the tip to the rim of the flask. His prick hung limp and stinging, muscles too wrung out to sheath it safely.

'Whoever his magister was, he picked his toy well for this task. Well, Karras?'

'Maker, it's true. Alrik! I could smell it in his blood, his sweat. Through my gloves I could not tell-- But this, this--!'

Alrik went forward with haste, disappearing behind the barrier severing Fenris from this last shame.

'Was it a nuisance and a time-waster?'

'No.'

'Ah-ah-ah, ease your grip now The lyrium is not for here and now. Not until we see if there is a way to stretch the offering larger than a single flask a day.'

'No! I did this, Alrik. The rest of you would have stood about and expected to talk the come out of him. This is mine. He is mine!'

'Ours,' Alrik said patiently. 'As is that flask.'

'Back off! Mage, call your barrier--'

'This is unnecessary,' Matteo said sharply. 'Let him have the corrupted stuff. Let him have it now and let the elf nurse this cursed memory of a templar desperate enough to lap the lyrium fresh from his prick.'

'And then,' Lucan drawled, 'we come back in an hour or so for another lot.'

Fenris felt his own cracked lips move, but no sound came.

There was a -- silence.

Not a silence. Rustling of skirts, replacing gauntlets and displaced armour. A whisper. Then a knock on the door, and fresh air flooded the room--

The room was empty before him but for an abandoned chair and a bed hardly used, and nothing behind him mattered.

'Templar. You have had your proof, your point made. Templar. Alrik.'

The door slid closed on greased runners, locks and bars snapping into place.

Fenris swallowed his rage before it could unmask the fear.

The magelight wisp dimmed.

If Alain had even half Anders' willpower, the wisp would not die for a half hour. Lucan had said one hour until they came back for--

Astounding how much his dignity still mattered to him, his arse stinging and his sheath swollen with the brutal handling.

Until they came back, then.

If they had not been mocking.

Not a half hour ago Fenris knew Kirkwall's sun, knew himself free enough to watch the moving nobles above and think of a day when the blind privilege of others did not fill him with an envy all the anger in the world could not hide. Still, he had felt free enough to take a teen-templar's wet licked lips as an invitation to brief, honest pleasure, to allow himself to be led through the Rose's cellar entrance, to these twisting hidden rooms where they would not have to pay for privacy, kissed and licked and chafed beyond caring, beyond noticing more than the old velvet on the walls and the table and the bed where Keran knelt for him, too scared to smile when Fenris locked hands behind his head and used his mouth--

This room, where he would not die.

Alain's crude healing left him aching deeply, feeling phantom bruises. His hangover, both alcohol and adrenaline, was approaching levels of torment. Fenris was bitterly thirsty.

He moved his wrists against the device which held him.

A simple table, of solid wood construction heavy enough that three templars had barely managed to manoeuvre its weight. A thin sheet of the cursed metal was tacked to the rear, he had seen so briefly, stopping him phasing through. Atop this, hinges, brackets and bolts had been added to permit its use as an impromptu pillory, though he was on his knees instead of standing.

The table was on its side. Fenris could not recall anything in the violence preceding the rape which suggested the templars had fixed the table against the floor with more than its own weight. No doubt stable on the long edges of its thick legs, if he pushed, braced elbow and wrist, the table could be tipped forward--

He would be just as caught, if lying on his face with the full weight of the table's wood crushing him. He might just break his neck.

Fenris laughed, for a while.

Stopped.

Panted.

The holes for neck and hands were at an awkward height. Fenris had not moved since Karras split him, afraid. His knees touched the table's chill metal sheathing, pushed there by the constant pressure of the Templar's knuckles against his hole. That side he could not see, did not want to see, where his legs were still hopelessly spread and his back an aching bow.

He pushed his knees further back, squeezed his thighs together and ignored the sting as the dull cramps flared to vicious life. Tensed his belly, held himself straight on the balls of his feet and braced through every instinct which told him to curl.

Fenris breathed slowly, visualising the air bleeding through his muscles until the cramps eased.

Then he had to bring his knees to the floor again. There was no other way to stay.

Other aches started in the long silence, a different muscle screaming in his thigh.

If he pushed the table, with care to ensure it would not tip, perhaps he could inch it across the floor, closer to the bed, or the chair, he could--

He was so thirsty.

And the magelight was dying, or Fenris' eyes were failing, the room's corners no longer distinct. Surely it had not been a full half hour by any a bell?

Fenris closed his eyes to spare himself the growing dark.

He could not remember any locks except the padlock on his collar. The bolts keeping the stocks closed were simply that. An insult or a taunt: anyone wandering by could free him.

The Blooming Rose's oft-drunk patrons might wander this far into the brothel's substructure. No one would think twice if a rotation of templars attended the Blooming Rose, disappearing down here for unknown respite.

Fenris screamed.

Just in case, he thought. But the room did not echo. His voice fell flat in a darkness he would not open his eyes to see.

Plumbing throbbed somewhere overhead, intermittent. Another Blooming Rose speciality, their baths. Tevinter had plumbing everywhere, the Free Marches almost nowhere, but the brothel had made the investment and retained the original piping.

Another inconsequential detail.

Fenris tasted blood.

After a while, he worked out how to brace his fat collar against the edge of the neck hole, sufficient to let his head droop without suffocating himself.

He slept, then cried out again when he awoke, fearing he had gone blind. Lyrium screamed through his blood, flaring bright and bold, the room's net of metal nails winking at him mockingly through his otherworld sight. Fenris twisted and kicked and panicked against the stocks, wrenching his wrists and head, phasing and failing to move.

Only a few seconds of panic, but the exhaustion near drowned him the moment he remembered.

The door opened with a racket already too familiar.

'Sorry,' Keran said, dully. 'I was supposed to come yesterday, but my arms master put me on drill...'

Did he really think Fenris cared?

When Fenris did not respond, Keran cleared his throat, bustling with too much motion to fill two bowls of water from a fat waterskin, uncapping a bowl of meat porridge. He refused to look Fenris in the eye even as he put the bowls on the chair and moved the chair within Fenris' reach.

They expected him to put his face in bowls and eat? Let them feed him by hand, if they wanted a pampered pet,.

But Fenris drank despite himself, messily, because he was dying of thirst, water flicking up along his cheeks and nose, a droplet suspended from one eyelash. Fenris focused on the light caught in that bead, even as he sucked the second bowl dry and ignored the sick, false fullness of his stomach.

Keran used the rest of the waterskin to disperse the puddle of piss between Fenris' knees. Then he crouched there, one hand on Fenris' back. Clinking, rustling, gobbing. Behind the wall with his paraphernalia, glass flask and leather glove and a pot of grease. Fenris imagined the wall between his head and the rest of this atrocity growing, until it filled the room edge to edge, as if he was in a room of his own separate to the sloppy hand now working at his sheath.

An interminable time passed.

'Please,' Keran whispered, shaking. 'Please. I don't want to be here any more than you do.'

Liar. Fool. Templar.

'I don't want to have to...Ah, Andraste, spare me this--'

Fenris flinched when Keran's finger teased at his arse, the leather seams sharp and aimless and all the worse for Keran's total naivety, worming around inside with no idea. He was being fingered by an incompetent child.

Fenris felt sick.

'Please just think of something nice.'

Nice? Sex was not nice. Desperate, necessary, insane. Bruising. Even fucking Hawke had been terrifying.

The apostate had surprised Fenris, mocking humour and bitter laughs. Even the mercenaries and slavers Fenris usually targeted for a fuck had never represented as great a risk. The apostate terrified him in general. Seducing a mage by choice had been as frightening as his first night alone, after Fenris chose to walk away from all he had known.

Hawke likes kissing, Isabela told him without prompting. Fenris thought men only kissed in tales.

Lips on lips and open his mouth. He drank sweet wine first, to taste better, and finished the bottle. Hawke's hands had been a shade too forceful in turning Fenris from the wall to the bed, so Fenris had turned with the motion and kept turning, back to Hawke's back, then slammed the apostate to his belly with what would have been better called a calculated wrestler's hold; but while Fenris went motionless, terrified into silence, Hawke hitched himself along, still on his belly, until just his toes had hung over the edge of the mattress, the curve of his muscled arse high. Breeches down by the fireplace. House robe long gone. Shadow of cleft and shaven balls and the insides of his thighs so...just...so, so.

Fenris had not known he had been missing seeing this, the inside of a man's thighs, had not known it for a loss all those years when his sex with men had been done standing up.

Vulnerable. Hair chafed away in that place only, beneath the robes where thigh rubbed on thigh. So soft to Fenris' fingers. So white, in contrast with Fenris' skin. White as lyrium scars.

Come on, then, Hawke always mocking. Lifting one arse cheek to bare the soft lip-lush pinkness, crude and cheeky. Just don't tie the knot with me, is that all right? I never could take it.

Until denied, Fenris had not known how much he wanted Hawke to want to take it. None of his lovers had unless he forced them (begged or demanded), the terrified elves who called him freak or the drunken pervert humans who thought, mistakenly, that he would be the one facing the wall and lifting his arse. No one since Danarius, who took it quietly as his right and punished Fenris if he did not make it easy. Danarius who was half elf and half human and seemed to envy Fenris his anatomy as much as he longed for the lyrium fill. Fenris wanted to tie with Hawke and thrust through the longest orgasm he had ever suffered, until both of them begged and wept for a finish, until he could forget the passionless servicing Danarius demanded.

He almost succeeded, despite what Hawke said. The apostate was wild and loud, slamming back against Fenris' thighs and rocking, writhing against the widening pressure of Fenris' knot, Fenris himself moaning and so lost, no real thought but proper penetration.

Hawke pulled away with a frantic strength, splayed across the bed this time to take Fenris' wet prick in his mouth. Then Fenris had come back to himself, revolted. Powerfully aroused. No, Hawke, Garrett, stop, I was just inside you, I was so deep--

It's all right. Hawke, smiling groggily. Licking his lips. His hand working Fenris' sheath, stretched taut and sensitive around the knot, everything sticky, tacky. It's only me. I want to.

A cavern of a mouth. Bursts of blinding pleasure. His come threading through Hawke's beard, pink tongue chasing the traces. Hawke's eyes fluttering closed, only the whites showing. Moaning. Both hands working him--

Milking him -- gagging and choking, mouth stretched so wide Fenris saw after his lip had split and bled, swallowing frantically--

So desperate for the lyrium even the thought of where Fenris' cock had been had not deterred him.

Silence, but for his breath curling around the room and back into his face. Sweat beaded and fell from his cheeks, his brow. Lank hair fringing his periphery, whitegold in the lantern light.

'Th--Thank you.' Keran clinked. Rustled. A squeak from corking the flask. 'For not making this more difficult--'

'Get out.'

Keran did not leave the lantern.

He did leave the bowl of cooling porridge. Thirst drove Fenris to lapping it up for the clammy broth. Traces cooled on his cheeks and chin, stiff and salty, and his thirst intensified.

Killed by Keran's arms master, Fenris thought in the hours of darkness which followed, when he realised he must well die of thirst.

He surprised himself awake by laughing.

Again, he panicked until he remembered he was not blind. He kept his lyrium alight until the exhaustion pulled him under again.

He could not bother bracing himself. If he let his throat press against the edge of the neck hole. He could just sleep. Drift. Die for want of breath, for want of caring--

I want to live!

He woke, unable to swallow, woozy. His tongue was thick, mouth constantly open. It occured to him the room was warmer than expected. With the rattle and thrum of plumbing audible, he must be near to the boiler room.

He had to shit.

He did.

The unknown Templar came in next, the one who had stood guard outside the door during the battle to subdue Fenris. Was that a day ago? Two? He would have died if it was any longer, surely.

The Templar reached over the table from behind, placing the lantern very close to Fenris' face, such brilliance after the dark blinding him entirely. Eyes too dry to stream.

There was no conversation, only a tch of disgust. The Templar scraped his shit off the floor, more abstract disgust, then doused him to wash away the traces. Some chill and stinging fabric swabbed his arse deeply, just as deep into the tip of his sorry prick, sheath forced back unforgivably to reveal the head.

Only one bowl of water was placed on the chair this time, and more sloppy food, both just blurry dark shapes.

Humiliation was a power in itself. The tch of disgust had been strong fuel, and Fenris closed his itching eyes and smacked over the chair with his hand, which could reach the chair but could not even reach his own face to scratch.

The bowls spilled unremarked.

This Templar was not unnecessarily cruel, not even accidentally cruel as Keran had been with his pathetic conversation. His finger was direct, and the stream of fluid which filled the flask came without Fenris' conscious volition, the same wretched, helpless squirting Karras had provoked on each horrible downwards stroke that first time.

The pressure point against the Templar's finger felt hard, huge, almost like another knot but buried deep within. He felt a strange relief when the Templar stopped jerking his prick, but it took some time to realise it was because the Templar had finished, pulling his finger out. The pain was such it still felt like something was pushing at him directly, a phantom finger.

The Templar patted him on the flank, almost companionably. 'You'll regret that spilled supper, friend.'

Dark. Hunger. Thirst.

The Templar had spoken arcanum.

No. He must have hallucinated that.

Fenris mustered his reserves, and gave a horrible attempt to amuse himself, imagining the templars keeping house after him. Wiping his arse clean, spoonfeeding him. Fighting and clawing at each other for the right to lick his spilled seed from a shining silver tray, the way Danarius used to let the magister opponents he had humbled and enslaved.

With some horror, Fenris realised he was crying, dry, heaving, hurting.

No. There could be none of this. Everything went on forcing himself to silence.

Dark. Hunger.

But he was no longer thirsty.

When next he surfaced, his dimly lit cell was revolving.

Fenris cried out, head lolling. The Templars tipped his prisoning table square on to four legs with head and hands still locked into the centre. His cramped, clumsy body sprawled beneath, legs limp and without strength, falling, his chin landing sharply on the table.

Blood seeped sluggish into his mouth.

A moment of respite, then something thick and hard parted his lips. A leather strap stretched over his forehead held his head back, hammered into the table by efficient hands.

Fenris choked on the sudden influx of water, gagging and spitting. The funnel was deep enough between his teeth he could not spit, shout bubbling through water, inhalation drowning.

'Enough.'

A hand stroked his hair. Fenris breathed through the funnel itself. The voice was Alrik's, but the hand was not. He rolled his eyes in the dim light to see what he could, little enough.

For a moment, Fenris did not understand the breeze stirring against his sweating skin.

They left the door open. Horrible, empty hope. Fenris tried to shout.

'Again. Fill him up.'

The broth was worse, nameless softened chunks and awful salt. Drowned in food. His stomach hurt long before they were finished. The funnel removed, the strap over his forehead untacked on one side, his head allowed to lift.

Alrik used a cool, wet rag to wipe his face clean. He patted the crusts away from Fenris' eyes and lashes, cleaned inside and behind his ears, and rested the cool rag around the raw, aching skin of Fenris' neck.

Fenris kept back the pleasure of that small kindness by keeping his eyes on Alrik andremembering.

'We are appalling caretakers,' Alrik acknowledged. 'We had our schedule, but I never anticipated that we would all be so busy as to forget. One too many missed appointments. You have my &mdash our -- apologies.'

Fenris twitched helplessly.

'It would be much to our preference, everyone's preference, if you could accept my initial proposal.'

Empty flasks and his own hand filling them. But the templars never specified that, only lyrium. Fenris had skill; if he had to smuggle lyrium from Orzammar itself, he would do it to spare himself this.

Or he could just kill them all, once out of this device. He had almost forgotten that.

'Yes. Your bargain. Yes.'

His voice was a stranger's.

'This is excellent news,' Alrik said. 'Alain?'

Karras released the mage's robes. Even in the washed out light, Alain looked grey, dampened, even less than the unwilling participant he had been before.

Fenris saw why when Alain pushed back his sleeves.

'Maker,' Keran choked. 'Ser Alrik, this is not right! Alain!'

'But what other assurance do we have?' Alrik held out a dagger across the flat of both palms. 'Fenris cannot even sign his own name to a contract. That leaves only a vow writ in blood.'

Fenris' throat felt so thick he could not even shout the lone denial.

Alain's thumb rubbed the thin, scattered scars across his wrists, eyes shiftless. 'Everyone thought I was doing it already, K--Keran. All the Kirkwall templars, just because of Decimus. What was left for me when they cornered me one day, they would have killed me for doing it even when I had never--'

The mage was asking forgiveness. Karras stilled the mage's shudders with one hand on his shoulder.

'Only Ser Karras believed me.' A voice smaller than stars.

'Ser Alrik, do not,' Keran begged. 'Fenris agreed! He would not expose us to Hawke.'

'--I would not,' Fenris said, through his teeth. 'You have my word.'

'Alas, the word of escaped slaves is not worth very much at all, without magic to bind it.'

Blood snaked free so easily from Alain's arm, his skin like paper. Alrik looked at the stained edge of the blade, quizzical.

Fenris could not. The horror overwhelmed his humiliation. If he was bound by blood magic, he would be bound. He knew.

'You'll have to speak,' Alrik said, regretful. 'Even the thought of condoning blood magic makes my skin crawl. I will not bind you without your consent.'

'This is no choice.'

'I warned you. No choices, Fenris. Only alternatives.'

There would always be a choice in this room, whatever Alrik tried to tell him, if only one. Blood magic would take that away from him.

And then, they were leaving.

Fenris begged them, Keran and Alain, pleasepleasepleaseno

The door still closed.

Karras accompanied Keran from then on, bringing Alain to wordlessly lay glyphs to keep the vermin away. The mage always fled before the worst began.

The elder Templar watched Keran performing his tasks. 'That's it. Work a proper lather. Put muscle into it.'

Keran cleaned Fenris with soap as well as the half-skin of water. Keran gave elfroot deep muscle rubs into limbs tortured by fixed posture. Keran also sucked Fenris off to draw his knot out, with gentle kisses hidden from Karras along Fenris' belly as he inched under, as if his mouth were a rare favour in this endless horror. Scorching salty insides and twirling sandpaper tongue, just another nightmare for his raw cock.

'Sloppier, Keran. Wetter. Let me hear it.'

The corruption of the youth, learning to love his power and the leaking lyrium as Fenris' voice loosened. His agony resounded and likely sounded, to Karras' twisted ears and even Keran's, like helpless pleasure.

Once, Keran pulled away and knelt beside, moaning and scrabbling to hoist his pleated skirts, his own wet lash falling across Fenris' thighs.

'You sick cat,' Karras purred. 'Sucking off the elf and getting off on it. Ware you don't contaminate the product.'

Keran said very little.

'Tell Hawke,' Fenris tried once, uncaring of Karras' ears. 'Varric. Someone. Hawke spared your life. I will do for you anything you need.'

'Hawke told the Knight Captain I was possessed.'

'You nearly were,' Karras said harshly. 'You were weak, templar! That weakness has been stripped from you now. Even you know yourself better for what's passed. This hardness is necessary for your survival.'

Keran never met Fenris' eyes, even if he did suck his cock. 'I owe Karras and Alrik too much.'

'Stop talking to him. You make it harder for him to adapt.'

Keran's kindness became cold and selfish, manipulating Fenris' arms and legs because a healthy load needed a healthy body, which needed motion. He treated the sores around Fenris' wrists and neck, the ones on his knees dispassionately, without concern for Fenris' pain, swabbing and wiping and padding--

His body stopped sheathing, leaving him jutting into the air, like a human. So he supposed. He could not see.

In the dark silence, he could hear a soft ceaseless drip that had not been there prior.

The plumbing, he told himself. Even with the ripping fist of pain behind his balls, they could not have broken him inside.

No option was given for Fenris to spurn his food or water again. Two of them always came to tip his table to four feet, to pin his head to the flat, and to pour food and water in excess amounts through a funnel shoved into his throat. Then, they tipped him back again and wrenched more substance out of him. The time was thick and thin before they came again, with no regularity. He was always mad with thirst, even his feeding time the liquid never touching his tongue.

Fenris did not remember when he stopped begging to eat like a dog from a bowl. Even practiced, it was difficult to take the torrent so quickly and deeply without choking. Only to open wholly, mouth and gullet, tongue flattened and unresisting, allowing them to fill him to their desired content. He never stopped shuddering when they delivered congratulatory pats to his straining belly.

The time between their coming was irregular, broken. His mind drifted, seeing such vivid things, no knowledge of waking or dreaming except for their coming.

Fenris woke and forgot how to control his lyrium. His control, his ghosting and phasing, had been as much a part of him as his limbs. His incapability was an amputated arm.

Then his arms were amputated, and his legs, because on the other side of the wall, the templars had decided them unnecessary for what they needed. Now his lyrium was useless, perhaps they would cut his body from his head.

Convulsing, Fenris woke again. A dream. His lyrium responded bright and bold, turning the darkness white. Aching with the necessary will, Fenris concentrated on clenching and relaxing each muscle individually, fingers through arms, back, legs, toes. One by one. Crown to heels, heels to crown. He owned these muscles. Used them. Needed them. Time passed in his self-focus, until the faltering lyrium flicker signalled his exhaustion.

Blackness.

Boredom.

He counted his teeth.

Either horror or silence. If Karras and Keran stopped talking to him, Castor and Lucan demanded his conversational response, and it was not the balm it could have been.

Castor was the Tevinter from his name and the cast of his features, but he did not speak Tevinter in Lucan's presence and Fenris did not think his forgotten hallucination worth mention. Castor smoked weed, and liked to watch Fenris smoke. Table upright, head out like a centrepiece, Fenris could have rejected the cigaret, could have not inhaled. But what else did he have? He breathed it deep every time Castor put the roll to his lips.

'You know what we hate about you?'

'My eyes.'

'Cleaning up your shit,' Lucan said. 'There has to be a better way. Do you know of a better way?'

The smoke was barely intoxicating, but Fenris felt it everywhere, lightheaded and desperate, permitting hope to hardly wing. 'Take me out of the stocks. I can use a pot--'

'Will you beg?'

'Will I--? Yes.'

'You'll beg to use a chamberpot?'

'Yes.'

'What a sad, sorry thing you are. All right, prove it next time.'

But they waited so long before returning that the thirst drove Fenris out of his mind again, mess waiting between his knees as it did every time. Instead of begging they had him apologising, grovelling.

He wondered if they had broken him. Certainly he would have begged for even a minute out of the pillory. A minute to see what had become of the body he only felt and never saw.

He knew they had broken him when he thought it better he never knew.

'You know something else we hate about you?'

'My hair.'

Because Castor was shaving him, having aired his lazy annoyance with the lank, unclean length. Two cutthroat razors, honed before Fenris' eyes, uncovered with some pain the shallow lyrium spirals which marred his skull.

'Always having to touch your filthy arse to get anything good out of you. When are you going to start coming for us? I had a girl in Denerim once, she would come every time I called, every time I whistled--'

'That was your dog.' Castor chuckled. He shaved Fenris' eyebrows with four jerking motions per side. He had been forbidden to flinch.

Even Keran's mouth induced nothing but agony. Fenris had forgotten what orgasm felt like.

Castor caught Fenris' gaze and held out a warning finger. 'Don't blink at all. Now I'm doing your eyelashes.'

The blade filled his vision, liquid in the dim light.

'You might want to try,' Lucan suggested brightly. 'Coming for us, that is. You might not like the alternative.'

The next time it was them, Castor brought a long glass probe with a bulb on one end. The holllow glass was not entirely fragile, he explained, making it sing with a flicked fingernail. But neither was it strong glass, cold and relentless against his vulnerable flesh in a way even a leather-clad finger was not, rubbing the raw lips of his hole as Castor eased it in through his slag.

'Open yourself up. Push outward. Look at you flowering, little elf! Even elfroot helps not at all with a perforated bowel, if you clench on this like you try to do with us.'

'We're only trying to help teach you,' Lucan rubbed Fenris' stubbled scalp, brisk and impersonal. 'Maker, touching you is disgusting.

The chill glass dragged Fenris back into inhabiting the hurting parts of his body, on the wrong side of the wall. Thighs and shoulders trembling with the strain of not straining against the painful, slender foreignness, the hard lump against the core of his hurt. Sweating everywhere. Dripping. He wept on every outward breath. Loose, loose, relaxed, leaking sporadic and pathetic into the flask below him even without a hand on his cock to milk it out, opening himself up through terror alone.

Opening his throat to the watering and feeding. Opening his prick in a way he never even knew possible. He was a hollow thing, ins and outs. Any resistance made it harder.

'That was better,' Lucan said approvingly. He dangled the flask over Fenris' side of the stocks, as if Fenris ever wanted to see what they did to him. Liquid swishing against glass, he squeezed his scabbed lids shut against the sight. 'Look at all that. Not even a helping hand needed. Well done. You haven't been nearly so productive lately. We were wondering what was wrong.'

Flask and glass safely away, Castor poured the last of the lukewarm water over Fenris' shuddering back.

Later, alone, Fenris vomited through a throat which did not even try to clench closed.

Then he thought through what would happen if he had twisted abruptly, broken the hollow glass and ripped himself. A slow death, but also with time to heal him. Except a Circle mage would have exposed them and Alain was not strong enough to heal a ripped bowel. Time enough to get him out of the stocks and to a Darktown clinic?

But Castor only brought wood or stone substitutes after that, heavy and hard, hurting even when he opened to them. Never glass again, never the choice.

'Wh-- where is your other comrade? Matteo.' Questions were risky. But Castor was smoking, and Castor smoking was Castor in a good mood.

'Hmm,' the Tevinter templar's smile was lazy, curling in the corners. 'An abomination. Alrik had nothing to do with it at all.'

He put his cigaret to Fenris' lips, dead-fish eyes watching for a flicker of defiance.

Fenris inhaled obediently.

And something fluttered in Fenris' throat, as far down as he wanted to feel these days, stopping the smoke.

An abomination. The abomination.

But the Templars did not know about Anders' alien influence, even if they knew about Anders.

Lucan patted the base of the heated stone, cooked in a pot of boiling water before they had curved it deep inside Fenris, provoking the pain which already filled his whole lower half. 'Of course,' Lucan drawled, 'Alrik spent hardly any time at all with the apprentice before her Harrowing, telling her what might happen to a weak pretty girl mage in a mean, one-eyed Templar's charge.'

'Mages. So gullible. Who else would believe a demon's promise?'

'Still. She proved a bitch to put down, after ripping our Teo's heart out and eating it. Why do demons always do that?'

Castor said, slyly, 'Were you hoping for a rescue, eh, elf?'

The fluttering thing did not go away. This fluttering thing. This leaping heart. This defiance. Fenris felt fevered.

Alrik came, too.

Alrik was the worst.

The table was always upright for Alrik's visits. Alrik brought food, proper food, not slurry, not piss and spit in a bucket. Alain with downcast eyes would set a proper dining setting, Keran standing blank-faced to one side, keeping Alrik's wine glass full.

The aroma of food and wine was heady, strong, Fenris' mouth slavering despite himself.

'Fifty five sovereigns,' Alrik said, 'at eighty silvers a flask. Of course the effect is corrupted, nowhere near as effective in maintaining focus as the Chantry's lyrium, but the freedom of being able to stave off that itch-- A couple of days extra leave, no fear of punishment on return, an overnighter at the Blooming Rose. Choice of a lyrium "rationing" instead of endless drill, eh, Keran?' The two shared a smile, an internal joke. Alrik's eyes went back to Fenris. 'If only you could maintain the rate of production, but it's notable things are...slowing.'

Crouching beneath the table brought Fenris' weight to his heels, let him feel the tortured swelling inside him. They were destroying him.

Alrik held out a slice of steak, mostly fat, on the end of his blade. Fenris ate it for the pleasure of remembering what it meant to swallow.

'Wine, Fenris?'

'Yes. Please.'

He gulped from Alrik's goblet, tilted too fast, threads spilling from the corners of his mouth. Keran refilled it from a dark bottle.

'What do you think you can do to maintain your current production rate?'

A negotiation. The parody churned in his belly. Fenris ate another slice of steak from Alrik's knife.

'Let me walk. Let me go.'

'We can provide aphrodisiacs.'

Begging for them to touch him? Begging through the raw sting of his abused prick? 'No. I need... Let me go. I need air!'

'Unfortunately, that was a once only offer. Alain has reformed his blood magic ways, and I for one do not have the heart to force him back into that dark path.'

Another time, a similar table setting, a candelabra hinting at sick romance between them. Again, Fenris drank from Alrik's goblet, ate from Alrik's knife.

'Orsino had an interesting visit today, Fenris. A Tevinter magister, of all things. Bearing a seal of diplomatic immunity fresh from the Archon's hand, so of course we could not deal with him as we would a usual mage--'

Fenris felt lightheaded, floating above the table and looking down on the chicken carcass, the sticky goblet, the dripping candles.

'It seems this Danarius returned to collect an escaped slave who rather fits your description. Of course we here all swore no knowledge -- I do not think you had any wish to return to your former servitude. He might have found more rumour in Lowtown or Darktown. For a magister he certainly did not balk from delving Kirkwall's filth.'

Fenris focused on the knot of Alrik's throat, the pulsing muscle in his jaw as he chewed and swallowed, drank and swallowed. Laughed.

'He seemed mostly satisfied you had long since moved on from Kirkwall. But who knows, with magisters?'

Danarius was in Kirkwall. Danarius, who had called Fenris his most valuable possession. Who had let him walk on his own two legs. Who wanted him powerful and strong. Who broke him and rebuilt him, the perfect wolfling.

Fenris had not even known the hope was there until it thundered live into his throat, dark wings near smothering him.

Alrik's eyes were dark, smiling. 'He left.'

Fenris' breath quickened despite himself. Danarius would not leave him.

Alrik set down his fork. 'But it grates, sometimes, to let a maleficar walk free, just so, for politics, when we all strive so hard and lose our own to the blood mages and abominations. And I thought, well. Here was Fenris' old master, a cruel man by all the tales told, to have, how did you put it, carve you like a piece of wood and pack lyrium dust into the open wounds? Here was an opportunity I could not resist, and my colleagues concurred. Templars have a responsibility, after all.'

Fenris knew before Castor stepped forward, silver tray and domed cover in his hands, lazy smile in place.

Alrik patted grease from his lips with a napkin, turning to the tray. 'As the Orlesians say, voilà.'

Fenris stared into Danarius' dead eyes.

'It might please you to know Keran struck the decapitating blow,' Alrik said mildly. 'The boy fought like one possessed. A merit to the templar name. I do believe he felt himself a veritable instrument of justice. I understand he has a queer little fondness for you.'

Danarius said nothing. The end of his beard was crusted with brown, half-pointed ears ragged at the lobes.

'Too much to expect any gratitude, I suppose.' Alrik's eyes were alight with maliciousness. 'I might as well go.'

Fenris fought to make a sound against the feathers in his throat. Could not. Danarius stared back from his silver platter.

The templars left him alone in the dark with Danarius's head on a plate.

Fenris held back the tears until all sound of their departure faded away.

He had committed wrong in the man's name. No less a wrong than was being done to him now.

A child in an adult body, looking to father for guidance.

You see all the people I command, each one under me gives me my significance, my power. They are why I can smile, and you will smile too, for your power is my power and I give it to you with grace. Smile for me, Fenris. Let me see your teeth. Now show these cowering dogs your claws.

In the dark, his face wet and burning, Fenris could still see the shape of the head. The mocking rictus setting in.

Open your mouth for me, Fenris. As wide as it will go. When I make the first cut, scream from the bottom of your stomach to the top of your voice.

But he did not do it. Trembling at the recollection.

The last time he remembered this strongly, he walked. Avoiding his thoughts. Avoiding the others. If he could avoid his thoughts, they could not cut him.

Now he could not move, could not run.

In a light unnatural and silver, Danarius held a simple thin knife, very thin and imperious. Now Fenris remembered most distinctly the feeling of standing naked and lanky and adolescent, proud before his master for breaking the rules, still the trail of come on his belly, the other slave trembling against his flank, her arms around his waist and face buried in his thigh.

He had not trembled when Danarius had him take the thin knife and hold it against his prick. Had not trembled when Danarius told him to send the edge where blame should lie, as if the two commands had not been the same.

The girl had known they were not. Fenris the innocent killer, who had not known his master's game well enough then, until she shrieked and declaimed him. She had not lied. He remembered her telling him, anything but the knot, she would get pregnant, and she did not want to explain his oversized Seheron spawn to the overseer.

No real reason to kill her, if the choice had been his balls or her life.

Fenris trembled now.

His own breath choking, knotting inside him.

But still he wanted to live.

The fluttering thing burst free from his throat, a vicious, sobbing exhalation, and he breathed freely. Drove off the overwhelming terror with great beats of his mind. Kept the panic down and away, in the dark, where he had practice, days and unknown weeks or months at doing this. He had been locked up before. They all had, in one way or another, him and his companions. Only the minute existed. Anything more was impossible to imagine.

Minute by minute, Fenris survived.

My little wolf, Danarius said to him, slavegirl blood peppering his robes. You will cost me too much to keep entertained like this. Come, walk with me. Even this, even your substance, is mine, to distribute only where I will it.

Fenris stiffened at the sound of the door grating open.

Closed.

Open.

They alternated without regularity. Karras and Kerun, breaking him with their cruel caretaking. No more oral sex from Kerun, whose distance grew until finally his revulsion turned him to torture too. Castor and Lucan, crushing him with their conversations, the growing power in their eyes as their humiliations continued without impediment or punishment. Alrik's farcical suppers, Fenris as captive headpiece, brief flashes of hateful sentience in this mess of nightmare, time between each visit lengthening. He was left very little room to contemplate resistance.

One thing only, in fact.

In the silences between their visits, he found it difficult to remember not to defecate the moment he felt the urge, to piss himself. Too long since that control mattered, a bird fouling his own nest without concern. Some time since his petty resolution until Castor and Lucan returned, by which point his restraint was a physical force consuming his mind.

The lantern. The flask. The greasing of whatever fat, obscene implement they wanted to use this time in lieu of a finger.

'Tch,' Lucan said. 'Did you deliberately wait until now? I suppose you think this is vengeance.'

A crippling fist powered into the small of Fenris' back.

'Go on, finish shitting yourself. Or do I have to kick it out of you?'

Castor laughed. 'Kick it out of him. Inch by inch.'

Lucan's boot went into Fenris' side. Fenris phased, still pinned in the stocks but momentarily invulnerable. The Templar staggered and fell through him, slipping on the persistent slime between Fenris' knees.

In the lyrium otherworld, Fenris growled and kicked back, blindly hoping--

Castor rounded the table, holding high a long shaft of the whitebright metal which kept Fenris trapped in these stocks, in this room. The metal rod cracked across his lyrium self.

Inescapable. He phased. Was struck again. Unphased, willpower worthless in their shadow. Struck until broken. Even thought faltered under the onslaught.

Castor paused to stretch his back. 'Ow.'

'Old man,' Lucan jeered. 'Is your arm tired?'

'Here. You do it.'

The rod passed over.

Eventually Fenris collapsed, weight pulling hard on his trapped wrists and shoulders. His knees slipped in his own spill as he tried to squat again, to ease the compelling sense of physical wrong. Cowered. Blood poured and roared. Lucan belted his stomach and sides hard, and did not stop until Fenris could not make any more noise which sounded like a plea to stop.

'Ah, now look at that. You did shit yourself. Why do you have to make such a mess of this place?'

'Put it back where it came from.'

'What a good idea. We should feed it back to you. Shovel it down your great gaping gullet. Here we've been wasting perfectly good nug slop on you when we could have just kept you -- self sustained.'

Laughter.

Fenris quivered, dripping helplessly.

'Go on. Is that what you want us to do? Is that why you've tried so hard to rile us? Have we been neglecting you?'

'No.'

'No, what?'

'No, no more.'

'I don't like being told no by a lyrium cow. I don't even think I can hear you any more. Cows have no voice.'

'Please, no.'

They were tipping his table up. Leather strap and invasive funnel andandand

He was not there!

He was not there, with fist-thick horror forcing down this throat. A field somewhere, an oceanic scene. Clouds across the sky. The faintest recollection of honest lust. Warm arms. Touch. He had been so wrong.

They tipped him to all fours again, and he vomited immediately.

'More food!' Lucan exulted. 'Ah, Fenris, the endless provider! Into the bucket, there we go. And do we have to do this again? No, stop gagging, stop it--'

The leather strap forced between his teeth and pulled back hard, cutting the corners of his mouth, his head upright against the flat of the table. Castor hammered the strap to hold. Fenris rolled his eyes frantically. He could not see them. The vomit boiled, his throat straining against the unnatural angle. He chewed leather and tasted himself.

'Listen,' drawled into his ear. 'Spew like this, and you might choke to death. You want to die choking on your own foulness? Stop it. Calm down. Calm.'

'Shh,' Lucan patting his trembling sides. Rubbing his spasming, bruised belly with a warm hand. 'Shh. There's a pet. Keep it in.'

Fingers rasping across the stubble of his scalp. 'Swallow it. You remember how to swallow. That's it. Good boy. Swallow. Keep swallowing.'

Hands pushed his thighs apart, and still he struggled. A cold touch on his raw arsehole, then a liquid curl inside, hot and jetting hard enough to feel solid, inexorable. The pressure burned on the hurting core which gave them such control. Burned. He thought the liquid acid.

Screaming.

Just water.

Still screaming.

'Do the next lot harder, Lucan. Something in him likes it.'

Not feeling the cold lip of the flask they slipped over his prick, leaking with the pain and the building pressure. The warmth curled obscenely into his abused stomach. Another vengeful pumping. The searing faded, but the pain changed.

Crippling cramp.

Full and sick. Hurting. An arm wrapped tight around his waist and squeezed, and every one of their blows felt fresh struck again, acid inside and clawing at his throat. The pressure wanted to mess, everywhere. Something nudged between his legs, smooth porcelain, the chamberpot he had begged for before.

'Go on, let it go. You'll feel wonderful.'

Terror and shame both at once. That he was on the verge of losing all control, every muscle weeping incompetence, that they would pour it down his throat after, that he would fight this and fight and it would still keep happening.

Fingers hooked into his hole and tugged downwards hard, three times. Warmth exploded out of him, pattering into the pot.

They repeated themselves until he was hollowed and thoughtless, the last time simply expelling on their coaxed endearments to spare himself the rhythmic tugs. The less they touched him, the more he was grateful.

Then that was done.

They were not watching him cry, tears sliding down his chin with the spit and bile. They were not interested in this part of him at all.

'Third flask, Fenris.'

He had nothing left.

'A helping hand.'

More cold metal, fat and twisting into his abused hole. It was smaller than some of what they used, and for a flashing instant, he felt his gratitude peak.

He retched soundlessly, body arching taut.

Because the metal did not delve like a probe, nestling instead in his tightness. They were doing something, moving it in small, strange ways, a metallic squeak, a twisting, all the more trepidation for that he did not, could not know what they were doing.

Ache became hurt.

The metal was widening.

'Like a blooming flower,' Castor said, wry. 'The nightmare mind which spawned this thing--'

'Is that hurting yet, Fenris?'

Worse than impalement. Worsening, and more painful for the steadiness of the increase. The pain was tightness, radiating out from that single point. He was going to tear open. A gaping wound, bloody and open, the size of a fist. He had ripped too many hearts out not to infer what it would look like. What they would do to him.

He writhed, bucking and twisting and doing nothing at all.

'Ah, that looks raw.' A finger, rubbing his rim in the spaces between the metal leaves. 'Hot as fire. Don't rip him, just leave it for a while. Time to accustom itself.'

Castor raised his voice. 'We'll be back when you're good and loose, Fenris.'

A second finger moved in the spaces between the metal spreading him open, an obscene wriggling for the lack of resistance.

'If I were you, I'd be grateful there's no rats in this room.'

The dark again, with a gag in his mouth and rot in his gut and a metal flower blooming wide in his arsehole.

He was not there.

Nor was he there when they came back, took the flower out, reached in a fist and squeezed the screaming lump inside him until they had their third full flask.

The process still hurt, his presence notwithstanding. He moved his legs and hips, his skin twitched nervelessly, he clenched his fists at the feeling of theirs moving inside him, but it was with a distant irritation. An animal, not understanding its owners and their reasons for hurting, but not caring enough to be distressed about it either. It was familiar. His mind did not wander. He had no mind.

The flushing was necessary after then, his control ruined. Having flushed him clean, they filled their flasks with the aid of a hand inside his hollow self. They fed him, poured water on him and sometimes rubbed him with soap, and moved his arms and legs around. The flower was put back after their ministrations, a familiar throbbing intrusion. They would leave.

He preferred the times they were not there to their presence.

When it hurt too much, he whimpered. Sometimes a soothing hand would rub his back, a voice hushing him, and obedient, he would stop.

They did not.

* * *

Smoke.

So strange. Unexpected. Did not know what it was.

Thick smoke.

Fire.

Knees, feet, wet and hot. Water sheeting across the floor. He lifted one leg.

Terror crawled out of the places he did not know he still had.

Fenris beat it down again. Watched the water rise and fall. Coughing gently. Too hard, and he would hurt.

An empty flask floated by.

Unflinching as the door he no longer believed truly existed, opened.

Startling to hear a different sound. Scraping close to his ears. Difference was terrifying, opportunity for more unknown fear, but the same place his terror lived sent forth an image, a phrase:

They were undoing the bolts which held the pillory closed.

Hands moved him, turned him. Still on his knees. There was the door. There was the other wall. There was the corridor beyond.

The corridor beyond.

Which led elsewhere.

Away.

He. He knew this.

A cursing voice, and the hand fiddling with the metal intrusion inside him finally stopped, caught hold of the device and simply pulled it free.

He whimpered and ducked his head. Blood slippery between his thighs.

Which he knew. Because he could move.

The confusion was monstrous.

'Fenris. Fenris, look at me. Here. Up here. Fenris.'

His body. His hands trembled, touching. Knees, thighs. Wet. The strangeness between his thighs horrified him. Ribs. Hip bones. Not his. He had never been this thin. Soft, sinking. Like rot.

'Fenris!'

The human with the inverted hair, none on his crown and all on his chin. The piercing blue eyes and kindly smile.

He held a bundle of fabric. Clothes.

Only pain stopped Fenris from lunging upwards.

'Those eyes! Oh, he wants these, I'll bet. Little animal.'

'Fenris,' said the kindly man. 'We have to go from here, a pipe has burst and somewhat belatedly I have been informed this room was designed as a sacrificial chamber. This is an opportunity for you I did not think I would see fit to give again, considering your last harsh rejection of my terms. And so. Are you ready now to obey me?'

Gibberish.

'Please,' Fenris said, but it was in another language and he could not remember the right word, the special word.

'Gibberish,' said the kindly man, and Fenris nearly moaned to have disappointed him. 'Castor?'

'Look at me,' measured, lazy, in the language Fenris knew. Fenris turned his head, jerking with unwillingness, to look at the cruel one, the horrible one, who always hurt him even when it bored him.

'Do you know me?'

'Yes,' Fenris said. Arcanum. Another word he reclaimed, to name the language.

'We will leave you here to die and drown if you do not serve us, animal.'

'I serve.' Fenris looked at the clothes. He wanted them, very much. He remembered something else he wanted, and began to crawl for the door. The kindly man pushed him back with a boot.

Fenris crawled closer again, bones screaming resistance, shaking fingertips reaching for the shiny, wet boot.

'What do you want,' Castor said coolly. Another human at his side, cruel with his grin. A youth behind the kindly man, whose eyes flinched and jerked around the room. An absence, where Fenris had expected another.

'To serve.'

'Where are you crawling to, animal?'

'To serve, to serve.' There was less water here, barely a skim beneath his knees. They let him reach the door this time, watching him. Walking around him. He kept crawling. Pausing in the doorway, with warm water only lapping at his toes. Near overwhelming with sensation. Fenris pushed past the threshhold.

'Not yet.'

The kindly man held out a flask and raised his eyebrow. Castor took it from him and placed it on the floor in front of Fenris.

'Listen, animal. Fill this and quickly.'

Fenris knew the flasks. But none of them reached for him. The empty glass had him shiver with horror. They wanted him to do it himself?

'Fill it or we shove you back inside and close the door.'

Fenris pulled the glass close.

His prick felt wrong against his palm, limp and long. Unresponsive. Fat dead grub. The water was touching his feet. He sat back on his heels -- whimpered, helplessly.

The pain inside made him remember how.

He threaded himself into the glass, clumsy, fine control lost. Then sat back on his heels again, holding the glass in place with one hand and reaching behind himself, between his legs, with the other.

The strangeness, the wrongness his fingers encountered made him moan.

Space. Air where there should not have been air. The pain, the source of all the pain, hard and lumpy and flaming against his thumb, which he twisted in and pressed, unrelenting.

Liquid loose like leaking blood. Filling the flask. He jerked himself, did not tense or stiffen. Open, opening. The slit at the tip a raw little mouth, little bursts, little precious cloudy tears.

Fenris held the flask out, shaking. Inched it across the floor, head bowed. Shuffled, dragged, himself in its wake.

'Dominus,' he said. 'Please. I am worthy.'

'Well, well, well,' said Ser Alrik.

'He called you master,' Ser Castor said, unnecessarily.

That was the word. The special word, in the language he had forgotten he knew. 'Master.'

A kindly smile.

Fenris screamed when the door slammed closed, crumpling into himself. Remembering only when he could still crumple, still hug his knees and regret the very motion, that he was on the other side of the door.

The other side. He had come through? He had come through.

He could not dress himself. Limbs manipulated into robes. Mage robes, something told him. Memory. A deep cowl. They dragged him to his feet, which would not work all the long length of the corridor, finding a hopeless balance only when they reached the top of a flight of stairs.

Flashes of thought. Peachy cheeks, flushed. Wet lips. A dark beard and frivolity, without maliciousness but still never quite kind.

A severed head, rotting next to his own until it was gone. A grief he should not have felt. My Maker.

Sun. No. Night. A brilliant stripe of light cutting across a dusty room, galaxies spinning in the shaft. Tattered velvet sliding against his skin. Skin which crawled and screamed with sparks of sensation just from the feel of a scratchy mage robe.

Light up ahead, whiteness blinding. His cheeks were wet as they hustled him, the centre of their phalanx.

He saw the sky.

Another night in Hightown.

Fenris stopped and phased.

The templars did not immediately notice.

The mage robe was enveloping, and not threaded in a lyrium he could control, and for a time being the cloth resisted his power. The strength of will which powered his connection to the Fade was barely there in any case, his limbs shimmering in fits as tremulous as his own motion, uncertain.

But something else filled the place where willpower used to be.

Fenris reached out gently. All his strength went to keeping him on his feet. This was important to him in ways he could never have known.

He pushed his hand through the armoured chest in front of him, then up, and left a gaping second grin ringing Lucan's throat.

Fenris wept to hear the blood fall.

A blade severed the mage robe at his waist, front and rear, swinging through otherwise unremarked. Hurting, wrenching inside, but he had no blood in this form, no organs to wound.

'Fenris! Obey me! Fenris, obey--'

Fenris had never obeyed. Not even Danarius, who thought he had made Fenris without realising the monster the gangling elf had always been. Danarius, who had realised quickly his new companion surpassed every expectation of murder and mayhem even a sadistic magister could have dreamed.

Castor's intestines unravelled in a great shining heap where Fenris let them go, trailing from his fingers like ribbons.

He could not run. Did not have the strength to run after the other, whose pounding feet were the signal for Hightown to close their doors and bar their windows.

A blade cut the remaining robe diagonally, falling from and through Fenris' fitful shining shoulders. The whitebright of his scars filled the plaza.

Fenris walked forward slowly, until Alrik's plate grated against a wall.

'Dominus,' Fenris said.

Just to see the queer, foreign hope flare in Alrik's pathetic eyes.

'Yes, Fenris,' Alrik said. Sweet tones. Sweat beaded on his bare skull, beads and rivulets, coursing like tears. 'The others are meaningless. I have always cared for you as a master should. Come, my friend, let the lesson stand as learned. As impressive as this display is--'

'Dominus,' Fenris said again. 'That is what you will call me, my friend, before I will let you die.'

Savage cunning.

Alrik lunged, blade lifting and striking the collar Fenris had almost forgotten, driving the deadly starmetal hard up into his throat, the underside of his chin. Ripping. Severing.

Fenris leaned into the blow, life bursting black against his glowing blue, spattering Alrik's shining plate, and reached into the templar's head.

Alrik convulsed. The sword clattered to the ground.

Ghosted his hand down, ripped the Templar's thrashing tongue in two. Touched agony into his throat, crimped his lungs, twisted through the acid-filled guts, and lower. Lower.

Paused, hand clawed through the Templar's unnecessary manhood, to let the screaming taper away into desperate breath.

Fenris' voice was almost gone, swallowed in liquid, drowning, destroyed.

'Say it. I will end this quickly.'

Panting. Ravaged. Incomprehensible and frothed with blood. A beautiful sound.

Alrik said it.

Then Alrik screamed for a precious minute longer, eyes filled with horrified disbelief as Fenris pulled out his dripping handful and pushed it into Alrik's ravaged mouth.

Only each minute mattered. Long enough.

When the body collapsed, Fenris let the trembling bring him low. None here to see. In the blood and gore. Something wrong was running down his legs, his own blood sheeting his chest. Warm. Then he was on his hands and knees.

No. Never again.

He rolled to his back. Fingertips tracing the cracks in the cobble. Opened his eyes, dreading to discover this another dream.

Sky. Still there.

The sound of pounding feet. Exclamations of discovery. A stranger's face in his field of vision, more than one.

Then another one, familiar and not fearful, not fearful at all.

'Fenris--'

Donnic. More lip than voice.

'What-- happened to you? What are you doing here?'

Dying, Fenris did not say.

'Get Hawke!'

Fading. Darkness at the corners. He did not like the dark.

He did not want to die.

'--Anders! Here, here, his throat--!'

A leonine roar, resounding across the court.

'On his side, you idiots!'

Hands. He did not like hands. But he would not die in these hands.

Fenris let the darkness come, and it was filled with stars.


End file.
